2013 OC Register Elementary School Rankings

The interwebz's preoccupation with lists and rankings is annoying.  It makes for good copy and is polarizing, which grabs attention, the goal for all of this rankings.  To try to objectify a student body into meaningful statistics is impossible.  Take a look at their methodology:

After consulting with education experts, the Register's education team developed a weighted formula that evaluates schools not only on the strength of their test scores, but also on their ethnic and socioeconomic diversity, the fitness level of students, and their state and federal awards

Whatever. 

Plus, how important is elementary school?  It's not like you have to get straight A's to get into a top middle school.  What's more important than having your child safe and happy in elementary school?  The key component of all strong schools is an active PTA with parental involvement both at school AND at home. 
 
I'm less concerned with the academics also... but... some of those things the OC Register does gauge teacher commitment and parental involvement. There are a supplemental articles that go into more detail on a few schools, teachers and their programs which is more interesting than just the rankings.
 
I'm jaded on stats because rankly, you get what you usually. 

That said, the info box had a rather shocking tid-bit in it:

"Poverty rates again correlated with ranking success, with the medal-winning schools having an average student poverty rate of 24 percent, while the other campuses' average poverty rate was 53.3 percent."

Now obviously, better success and poverty being somewhat inversely related isn't shocking.  However, that other little tidbit, that 53.3% poverty rate for the 300+ non-medalist schools?

Basically, their methodology is API score with a tie-breaker based on your 'diversity'.
 
We have found that the children in your kids classroom affect the learning environment as much, if not more, than the teacher.  You can have a great school and great teacher-- but if the mix of kids is caustic - it can ruin your year.
 
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